Mint On Your Pillow
by Barry Eysman
Summary: A quick look at another slice of the human comedy


Mint on Your Pillow

Mint on Your Pillow

By

Barry Eysman

"Pretty soon now."

"Yes. I would think—almost exactly ten minutes on the dot."

"How do we tell him?"

"I don't know, Cynthia."

"Do we have to?"

"He's fifteen and a half, Cynthia. If we don't, others will."

"But how could they know?"

"How not?"

"Indeed."

"Should I?"

"No. I shall."

"No. I."

"He will come in that door…"

"And we shall just—"

"Let him have it?"

"I don't see why not."

"It'll be the end of the world to him."

"Well, yes, that of course."

"But he's a strong boy."

"I dare say."

"How was it when your parents told you?"

"Well, I felt a little—"

"Freakish?"

"I hate it when you complete my sentences for me."

"Marriage and the like. Sometimes I can't tell us apart. I don't know if I'm you or you are me or if we are entirely others after all."

"I couldn't tell which of us was saying these line if I were reading them. Except—"

"Well—Cynthia is mentioned."

"But Rupert isn't."

"Quite right."

Chortle.

Chortle.

"It was a bit dicey when my parents told me. I mean being from another planet would have been music to my ears instead."

"Tore you up a mite, did it?"

"Rent my soul."

"No, thank you darling. I don't need one at this late date."

"What?"

"Rent your soul."

"Oh posh."

"You got over it, though?"

"Oh it took years. But I blame myself."

"How so?"

"I should have had it figured out long before they told me."

"The way others knew the secret for it's sheer obviousness?"

"Touché. And how my parents looked and how I did and what we talked about and did not. What we shied away from. What movies and books said—our secrets-that we were keeping from each other."

"Somewhat the same here, Cynthia or Rupert as the case may be."

"Oh you are a caution, sweets."

"That's why really we should tell him, actually we should have told him far sooner than now."

"Yes. We'd be right on the road to accepting it. It's hard on us too, dear."

"Yes, I s'ppose. As it must have been on mater and pater."

"Oh you fussbudget cornball—haha-I haven't heard 'mater and pater' in a dog's age."

"Oh, cream puff, I say, I haven't heard 'in a dog's age' in a dog's age."

"Oh, look sharp, pretend we are always sitting ramrod straight when Devon comes home from school as we are this brisk March afternoon in our two-story Tudor in Devonshire, we being socialites extraordinaire."

"With all eyes on us and on our son—he always will be, no matter what we have to tell him—"

"Oh, yes, I say—then we can let this terrible nonsense drop and be a loving family ag—"

Doorknob turns. Enter Devon in prep school blue short pants, bright white shirt, royal blue coat with the school crest on the left side as he has gotten home for a few days from prep school, which of course would make sense, for what would he be doing coming home from a school in Red Hook, N.J. wearing prep school clothes? How indeed would he survive a first day of school there or any other school but a prep school with the correct prep school cap and cufflinks and school tie?

He sees mama and papa sitting there like Popsicles. Is aware they now know what he has always known, what the peons, what the society pages, what the paparazzi already know, for it was so obvious in every snap they took of this highly blue blooded family without a taint of scandal, so the only way to beat mama and papa to the punch was for Devon to say exactly what he did say, in exact time with his parents to him, though he used I and they used they:

"I..

"We..

"…just don't like you very much."

There. The crushing thing was out. Would their dear son fall faint in the vestibule? Would he be crushed by his backpack, filled with all sorts of eclectic books, school, and his own, for he was an omnivorous reader. He would not dare be anything else.

They looked at him with ashen faces, though their faces were naturally ashes, blue-bloods and all, as he smiled and said, as he dumped the book bag on the plush wine carpeting by the seven foot tall white Polar Bear now stuffed and used for a hat rack, and headed off to the kitchen:

"Time for tea and crumpets. Cook always likes to treat me specially when I'm home. I've got her preggers, she told me in the post last week. La de da de da de da," as he went merrily marching along.

"Well, that went swimmingly. I can take off this ascot and monkey suit and you can slip into something comfortable, though remember Cynthia, and treat your organdy gown with kid gloves. We're off to the Mayersons tomorrow night. "

"Ah, Rupert, did ah—did you hear…?"

"What, dear?"

"When..well..did... Devon say something when we told him we didn't like him?"

"What?" Rupert gets up out of straight back chair, which they were using for the last four hours in order to punish themselves for destroying their son's life with their admission. Rupert feels pain in his back, bends over once or twice, groaning, saying, "I feel pain in my back."

"Oh never mind," Cynthia began getting up from her straight back chair and was also in much spinal pain.

"Well," Rupert said yawning, "I think he took it rather well." As he pulled ye rope sash so Jeeves, Jr. could take the chairs back to wherever he had taken them from in the first place, wherever that had been.

"Oh, Rupert," Cynthia said, as he helped her to their bedroom where they would lie on their Louis the 14th bed for a few hours deciding whether they should make their one time attempt at love this year or just re-schedule it for next year. "Cook tells me Devon has got her—with child--"

"Oh, Cynthia, she told me too. Wonder how Devon will take it?"

"It will come as a bit of a blow, I should say."

"Well—not to worry, we'll pretend to like him and see that Cook and Jeeves, Jr. see him through it."

"No more need of hired girls to take care of Devon."

"Yes, indeed, that cuts down a bob or two. Now that that's been taken care of by the hired help."

"Oh, I don't know."

"Eh?" Winded.

As were they both. Time was coming when Rupert would finally have to admit it; about himself at least, that they needed a golf cart in here after all.

"He's quite a cocksman, our lad."

"OH, haha—pant-gasp. Yes. But I don't know what the girlies see in him, do you?"

"No—cough-breathe raggedly—I can't stand the little bugger."

"Lord, I am glad that bust of Balzac is on this table—you go on without me for a minute-coughing--" up blood—"I hate that miserable what's his name."

One mile later, they arrive at their bedroom, and fall onto their Louis the 14th bed. They do not lie there for a few hours deciding on this love making business. They are much older now than they were.

So they fall immediately asleep.


End file.
